Review of the m15x - with pics

Okay, so I promised you all a review and that is what I will do. I also promised you a review with pictures (hi-def) and I have also done this!

Right, let's get straight to the nitty gritty of my m15x which I received on the 22nd of September!
In the box was the following:

Core 2 duo 2.5ghz
4gb of ram (upgraded from 1gb to 4gb myself – really really easy)
AlienFX
320gb 7200rpm 16mb cache with free fall protection
WXGA screen – 1440x900
Extra Smartbay battery
8800gtx

I got home on the Friday night, to find it was awaiting for me at home. So I got home, everyone sang happy birthday... and then I ripped into the cardboard box, to then find there was another cardboard box, and then another one (the accessories box). I left the laptop in there, with it's foam keeping it in place.
I opened the rather large but thin black box to find:
Briefcase with details and manual
Smartbay battery
Charger
Cap

So after putting the cap on (come on, I HAD to ), I then carefully removed the rather heavy object from the black box (in foam). I placed it gingerly on the table, and removed the black casing thing. I looked down and was like WOAH, they've stuck an image on me on the front... oh wait. So yeah after looking at this thing in awe, and looking at it from every angle I decided it was time to use it as a laptop. So I opened it.
My face fell slightly, it was not as nice as I thought, it was all flat and not much really going on. So I decided to turn it on to make me feel better (I knew that the alien head was the on button so I taped on it not knowing whether it was a button or touch but either way it turned on) – best thing I had done all day. IT WAS CHRISTMAS!!!! I looked out the window to find no snow, I then looked at my watch “26th september”. Okay so it wasn't Christmas, but it sure looked like it.

I can't remember what the preset colours where but as soon as I had done the windows first time setup thing I fiddled with them, setting them to random and quite disgusting colour combinations lol.

Right you've had my info so now I'll go through my experiences and faults with it.

Chassis
First thing I noticed was that I had 2 scratches from receiving it – but I didn't want to send it back so I left it and ignored it. After all, I will probably contribute to those scratches in the near future. But they were not really noticeable so I wasn't to bothered. I was fairly annoyed that it came with them however. There was also a bump on the screen were the paint wasn't properly flat (kinda like when you get some thick paint and then bring the brush up and it has a little point. I couldn't get any images of it but you can imagine what I mean. The other thing I noticed was the pipe on the side of the screen on the left side was larger than everywhere else, so it wasn't joined properly – so I simply squeezed it back, but it comes lose as the day goes (I sub-consequently squeeze there every so often).

I have noticed that it attracts a lot of fingerprints, so I clean it everynight (or every other night), but the fingerprints on the silver chassis is nothing compared to the black outline on the screen (you'll be able to see it in some pics)




Keyboard
The keyboard is great, I love the font and the lights and it's just really nice to type on. They keyboard is larger than my old 15.4”'s laptop as well, so it took a while for my fingers to get used to it but now I type like before. But the lag is getting to me, I have had to correct this document a lot of times already because of the latency. But I can't remove the synaptics driver because I hate touch to tap and with the synaptic app I can disable it .
There is no flex when im typing but if I press fairly hard on the “i” I see abit of flex, but that is all.


Touchpad:
The touchpad isn't great by all means. There is no way of telling when you are at the end of the sensitive area until you have used it for a few days and can tell. Without the sticker it is a drag quite liturally to use.
You can kinda tell it was a last resort to chuck in the stickers to try and fix the design problem, but I'm glad they did. The light around the touchpad is good, much stronger than the keyboard but that is expected because less surface area to light up.
The see-saw button is annoying, im used to having 2 buttons, where you can press anywhere and it will register, whereas with this button design, the closer you get to the middle, the more pressure you have to apply!


Touch Buttons:
The touch buttons work fine for me, it's not instant but its near to it. Its not like a “jab” and it will register you have to apply it for a millisecond longer than you normally would. But whenever I sleep (without hybrid mode) it will screw up the touch buttons and the only way to fix it is to put it into sleep and then bring it out again. The volume bit is instant to the touch (unlike the bluetooth, wireless, stealth etc. buttons) but it's a bit dodgy it flashes on and off when you slide down. And one full swipe from + to – will not bring it from full volume to no volume which is slightly weird. Something I also would of liked including the dragging from left to right (and vica versa) on the volume would be by tapping + and – to control volume.

(Sorry don't have one of the other side (volume) – and I cba to get the camera out, it's back in it's bag )

Screen:
The screen is excellent on this beast, it's very bright (to the point I want to turn it down at night – which I have NEVER wanted to do before), and also great for viewing in sunlight. My previous laptop wasn't great for its screen (only 1280x800) and the brightness sucked to be frank. However I have noticed there is a pressure point when you shut the lid (the screen has an imprint and waves appear – argh I can't think of the word but you get what I mean, it's like when you press hard on a lcd screen).
The screen also creaks slightly when you open and close it, but nothing major. On a positive, there is not much screen wobble

Speakers:
The speakers aren't too bad, they have a tad bass (enough to make the chassis vibrate a bit) and are fairly loud. But I have the problem of the speakers popping when listening to music and playing a game. But I can put up with it. However I have a imperfection on the speaker, one of the lines that go horizontally across is bent upwards. It is quite noticeable, but I think it looks quite cool lol, shame the other speaker doesn't have it.

As you can see below, this is the speaker that is slightly deformed


Webcam:
It aint great at all, very blurred but the effects program it comes with makes it slightly better. But as a wecam it is great. The people who go “how many megapixels does it have?” annoy me, because it's not all about the megapixels, I won't go into the details. But as a webcam it is great, just don't try to take any landscape photo's with it (I'd like to see you try, would be quite funny to watch – trying to balance it the opposite way and press capture and keeping it steady.


Ports:
All the ports work for me, shame that it doesn't have a normal screen output, ah well... it is a laptop after all. If I was nit picking I would say I wish it had 2 usb ports on each side but heyho can't get everything you want in life



Microphones:
Yes I mean microphone s because there is 2. And they are actually pretty good, they're really sensitive and can pick up the smallest of sounds. Well placed as well, on my old laptop it was near the keyboard, so all you could here was the tapping of keys.


Graphics Card:
Is friggin awesome. I can max everything out at playable rates (haven't tried crysis yet, I bought it on steam, but it wont load :S). I have assasins creed (everything maxed out), Testdrive Unlimited (maxed out), Spore (maxed out – but does anyone know why it limits itself to 30-31 fps? I can set everything to heighest or to lowest and it wont increase/decrease), and snake 2 ****ing hell, that runs like a demon. The reason for buying this is to max out snake 2 – I can play it on heighest speed and it runs at high fps. Defo worth the £2000 just to max out snake.

Heat:
Heat is actually not too bad. It gets warm, but not much more. I can play with the laptop on my legs and play games and it wont go higher than 73 degrees. But it doesn't feel that hot. Heat distribution is good imo.
When the fans kick in, they're quite loud but tapping stealth mode, on then off will turn them off or slow them to an inaudible speed.

AlienFX:
Pretty **** cool. The Control centre it comes with to control colours is fairly basic compared to the apps you can get off here (by findvikas). I would have been pleased with the standard app, but it takes a tad while to load up for the first time, and all the animations are cool but un-needed. I love the fact that you can choose different bits, and choose the colour. Definite head-turner. The morphing effects are cool but abit jerky – hopefully findvikas can fix this



Performance:
Well I'm running vista home premium, and all in all it's rapid. Loads up in just under 45secs and it's ready to go, and keep me smiling. The 2.5ghz is a big jump from the 1.6ghz dual core (not core 2 duo) that I had previously. It will max out everything I throw at it, and open everything at a nice pace.

Battery:
Battery is frigging amazing, no, seriously. With a smartbay battery and the main one I am getting 6.4 hours out of it (with wireless turned off and stealthmode on, and intergrated). However I only get 3-3.5 with the main gpu and stealthmode on and wireless off. But for me this is great.


Conclusion:
All in all, I do NOT regret buying this laptop, although it's fairly chunky and heavy it's nothing compared to the speed it brings. I have to admit though, take away the skullcap design, and the lights, and it's just a clump of plastic. But keep them and it's a whole new world! All my mates (even the ones who usually criticise everything had nothing bad to say about it). The 4gb of ram, and the processor and the gpu just completes it for me. And I will be keeping this for a long time, updating it with new components as they come available.
For now though, I am going to leave you with this, and hope it helps you choose your mind on whether you want to buy the m15x or not.

 

nice... I should also do a review sometime.. as its 2 happy months...

 

Nice review there napbree, cant say i agree with your lighting preferences but nevertheless good pics. As for your bend in the plastic you could quite easily get it 'bent out' again with some type of heatgun, but hey if you like it...
You're also lucky to have temps like that imo, mine are easily 80-85 when gaming.

Tom

 

Ha, yeah the lighting scheme is not the best - I don't care about the colours, I just try to make it nice on the eyes, and for some reason I like pink (and I am male)... Heck you'd never guess I was a web designer would you

 

Nice review Napbree


Not much screenwobble e? Did you tighten the screw of your screen yourself? or did they do that at alienware? Also, if i would remove the rubber thingies and tighten the screws, would that void my waranty? The wobble can be quite annoying if you have some teammates at a lanparty who are very "passionate" (read smashing the table everytime they get killed) gamers...

 

Well I assume there is none, I shake the laptop vigorosuly and its still when I stop. And no I didn't tighten them myself. Not sure if it would void the warranty though. Lol at the lan party, I have never been to one, and don't plan too - not my style. I prefer real partys lol.

 

first person without blurry pics

 

Nice review, love the pictures!

 

All of these great reviews are making my laptop decision harder...

I guess I'll have to wait and see if Alienware, Apple, or Voodoo does anything new for the holiday season. By the way, really nice pictures.

 

Indeed, your pics are the best quality so far. Good review!

 

finally another person who decided to show the m15x with the pink keyboard. i think the pink keyboard is actually one of the better colors for the m15x for some reason. i also noticed that your touchpad sticker is just like mine. its crooked too

 

Thanks for the feedback guys

Yeah I really like the pink it looks smart ***. And yeah the touchpad was straight but I took it off again because I thought I put it too far up (I didn't) and I rushed it the second time. But because I don't use my touchpad anymore (2 weeks was long enough ) I cba changing it.

The pics were taken from a nikon, so I that's why they're good quality

 

great review Napbree and as mentioned great pictures.
i do miss mine especially the screen. its the only downer for me on the sager.

 

I rock the purple LEDs! Similar to pink but purple is just my color. I'll be sure to take pictures when I post my 6 month review.

 

love that first picture

 

Thanks

Glad to know my review is appreciated, and hopefully will help others choose.

 

woah thats a heavy print over the webcam 0.o

 

Thanks for the review. This laptop looks nice with this color combo.

 

There's actually no reason to touch the black part around the display. You can open and close it other ways so I avoid all fingerprints.

 

The fingerprint marks, where the webcamis, is lots of opening and closing from there

 

So are them two stickers you recieve with the laptop for the touch pad?
Or did you just improvise? lmao
I always wonderd what to do with them stickers.

 

Yes they are for the touchpad

They help considerably.

Wow no one has replied for ages

 

Sweet review! +rep!!!

 

Thank you

 

Excellent review! That is the thing that has always got me with Alienware, the FX. Anyway, how much does this cost maxed out?

I just bought a Lenovo Y530 (the best one on the page, but not 64-bit). I just found out about this "Review" section... I can't wait to write a review about it!

But I have to wait until it arrives

But excellent pictures and review!!!

 

Thanks, I really do love this laptop.

 

cool, I am also a m15x owner and have no regrets
I'm sorry for one of my friends who had his m15x sent back for repair because his hinge cracked
However, I consider myself either lucky or hasn't got to the time of doom. :|

I am gonna take care of my lappy in more care. My goal with m15x is to have a steady 4+ years relationship (I know it's disgusting but hey )

 

Nice pictures. Thanks for the review!

Duane